An Early Morning (or, Late Night) Diversion

Addenda to Summer Reading

A couple of notes to go with "Drive" --
www.danpink.com/drive.html
Despair Inc - http://diy.despair.com/motivator.php (tried it; pretty cool)
Big Huge Labs - http://bighugelabs.com/motivator.php (not yet)
Automotivator - http://wigflip.com/automotivator/ (not yet)

Also, that Steinbeck book got more scary the closer I got to the end. Yikes!

Summer Reading

It has been a good summer for reading. Actually, though, it started back in the spring with War & Peace. Which, of course, managed to last almost until summer. Ironically it's the book I took with me to Ireland and which gave a little something to do when the Icelandic volcano kept me (and a bunch of others) in Dublin for an extra week.

Tolstoy's writing was great, but I must admit a few of the latter chapters were hard to get through. Much philosophizing. But worth the effort. It was made all the better by comparing it to the graphic from the mid-1800s showing Napoleon's advance to, and retreat from, Moscow, an information-laden visual aid that Edward Tufte says is perhaps the best ever. (It's on his website and in his books.)

After that I read The Fourth Turning, which gives some hope to our present situation. The authors' explanation, now a decade old, of how society moves in saecula with roughly four 20-year subdivisions was calmly reassuring. It's not necessarily the end of the world.

Remembering that some novels are classics for a reason, I picked up Catcher in the Rye. I can see why there was an uproar over its use in schools, but that guy really can write. Great balance of excellent dialogue - and what a voice he developed! - with stream of consciousness narrative that fills in gaps in the past and future. And whereas Tolstoy covered a couple of generations, and the 4th covered almost five centuries, Salinger covered about a week in the life of Holden Caulfield.

One notable quote came out of this one. His old teacher, Mr. Antolini, on page 188 shares this quote, which he attributes to Wilhelm Stekel: "The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one." Good reminder.

Just this last week I finished Drive by Daniel Pink. Another "aha!" type of book. Again, his commentary about what motivates rings true to what I've observed and felt. Check out the ideas at www.danpink.com. Let's hear it for the Motivation 3.0 operating system!

Now I'm half way through The Winter of Our Discontent. Didn't realize Steinbeck won a Pulitzer prize for that until I read the introduction, but reading the text I can see why he did. What a masterful writer of both dialogue and plot. Looks like there will be more of both his and Salinger's writing in my upcoming selections.

Why magazines still matter

Heard a short piece on NPR last night (they have to be short since I'm only driving 1.8 miles these days) and they nail it with regard to magazines. At about 3:25 into the interview, one of The Knot's co-founders observes that magazines offer a "realm of discovery" that you don't have while using that other medium, the Internet, to get information. Read about it, or listen to it, here..
But don't miss the other gentleman's observation that the magazine publishing industry has changed forever.

Experimenting with one Twitter widget

(didn't work as expected; however, you can see it at right, below the links)

Whoa, they're big

Those wind turbines popping up across the U.S., sometimes singly and but more often in “wind farms,” are larger than one might first think. Seen from a passing vehicle, headed south on I-65 toward Purdue near Wolcott, Ind., for example, the slowly and gracefully turning rotors bely the true size of these power producers.
A little investigation turned up some interesting information about this technology. Commercial scale wind turbines only operate at wind speeds of 11 mph or greater. Typically they are mounted 100 ft or more above the ground, which lets them take advantage of the faster and less turbulent wind at that height. Taller towers sometimes use rotors having a diameter of more than 300 feet.
Each typically generates a megawatt or more of electrical energy. Where wind farms can be connected to the electrical grid, they can contribute significantly to our electrical power needs.

We came across this Department of Energy photo that shows one completed tower, another where the rotor is being lifted into place, and a few people, a big crane, and a pickup truck to help show the scale. Each of the blades is 118 ft long. It's at the Red Hills Wind Farm in Oklahoma. Just in case the photo's missing, here's the link: http://www.nrel.gov/data/pix/Jpegs/16483.jpg (Photo by Todd Spink, courtesy of DOE/NREL.)
Refreshed URL for the image (with explanation), Oct 30, 2015: http://images.nrel.gov/viewphoto.php?imageId=6311868